Really Was Born Yesterday

Edit Locked

"She has a newness. Everything is for the first time... If I had learned she had been born this very morning, I would only be surprised that she was so old."

— Prince Lír, The Last Unicornnote This is said the first time he sees the unicorn, who was indeed changed into a human woman only the previous night.

Subverting the old joke, this character really was born yesterday, or this week at least, either artificially aged or just plain made the age they are now. They tend not to understand slang, or much of anything else, and will misunderstand social rules with usually comic results. May also be the result of a person being born normally but kept in some kind of stasis and never being conscious during their development since they still awake as a 'new' person.

Advertisement:

Behavior from such as the Manchild is to be expected. From the other end, they can exist on a strange perpendicular line with the previous trope and Wise Beyond Their Years.

Note: Please be careful when adding robot examples as, broadly, they almost all count. As a general rule examples should be kept to those that act in a way that is very strongly reminiscent of the Trope description. Real Life examples may be added but should be related to medical conditions.

Advertisement:

Examples:

open/close all folders

Anime and Manga

Chii in Chobits. Not in a physical sense, her body is a robot that has existed for a while. But she's dead at the beginning of the series, and in the first episode she gets reincarnated into her own body. Her new self is very much born yesterday, having to learn everything.

Yuki of Haruhi Suzumiya appears to be a high-schooler but is really a three-year-old alien interface thingy. Asakura is similar. They fit the trope even more closely later in the series, when Kyon and Mikuru meet them three years in the past and they still appear to be high-school age. And since the event that was the reason Yuki and Asakura were created (something about data created by Haruhi and the potential for evolution) happened on Tanabata three years ago, and Kyon and Mikuru went back to that same day, it's probable that they were only a few hours old or even less at that point.

In Kemono Friends, the titular Friends are all Little Bit Beastly girls born from a live animal or biological samples of them coming into contact with Sandstar, and most of them are probably much younger than their appearances would suggest. The best example is definitely Kaban/Bag, the Token Human who is at most a few days old by the end of the series since she was born during the last Sandstar eruption after a bit of it came into contact with a human hair inside a lost hat.

The title character of My Dear Marie literally tells the rest of the cast she was in fact born yesterday, much to the consternation of her creator who is barely trying to cover up the fact she's a robot copy of the girl he has a crush on at school (Mari). That she does in fact act like this doesn't help either. Luckily, the real Mari just assumes she means it was her birthday.

In the manga version, Kaworu is only nine days old when first introduced. As such it's really no surprise that he has No Social Skills and does things like accost Shinji in the shower while they're both naked.

Rei Ayanami also counts in certain versions. The "first" Rei who looks like a child in a flashback is hinted to be much younger than she appears, and thanks to the Body Backup Drive that is the "Reiquarium" she's effectively reborn whenever her soul is put into a new body. This effectively resets her personality but only to a point, as Gendo discovers to his dismay in End of Evangelion.

UQ Holder!: Touta Konoe doesn't have any memories from before about four years ago, and believes he has amnesia. Turns out, nope, the reason he doesn't have memories going back further is that he didn't exist until four years ago.

In Overlord, all of the Nazarick denizens started out as simple videogame NPC creations of Satoru's guild. Their existences as sentient living beings only started when they ended up in the New World alongside Satoru in his Momonga avatar. The contrast between their apparent ages and their actual ages is made clear in the Light Novel when it's noted that Sebas Tian, despite looking like an elderly gentleman and acting like one, is much younger than Climb. This also applies to the Goblins summoned by Enri using the Horns of the Goblin General. The Goblins look and act like seasoned veteran warriors, but they didn't exist prior to being summoned. The Horns actually created Goblins based on the "ideal" of what a Goblin is in the New World.

Comic Books

Tesla, the title character in The Clockwork Girl, is only a day or so old when Huxley first takes her out to see the natural world. She's delighted with all the things she's seeing for the very first time. He responds that he thinks he's never really seen them before now, either.

Victor from Runaways is a two-year-old cyborg who was built as a teenager and given fake memories to make him think he's a normal human teenager.

Tailgate, in The Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye ends up being this: when we meet him, he's been in a form of stasis for six million years, long enough to be a peer of Cyclonus, which should make him one of the oldest members of the cast. However, at one point, he reveals that he was created at Rivets Field. Cyclonus is surprised at this, pointing out that Rivets Field didn't fire up until shortly before the incident that placed him in stasis. Tailgate only confirms it: his body may have lasted eons, but his mind at the start of the series is only two weeks old.

In Transmetropolitan, The Smiler's original pick for a vice presidential candidate was a two-year old first-term representative who had been cloned. He had a completely clean record, and no baggage from past scandals — that is, except the scandal of his actual identity.

Madelyne Pryor, Scott Summer's first wife in X-Men was eventually retconned into a clone of Jean, but despite this she's pretty well socially adjusted until she goes nuts after Scott abandons her.

The An Astral Drop in Heatherfield starts with Hope's literal moment of creation and ends only two months later - although she packs a lot into her first few weeks alive.

Advertisement:

Film  Animation

The Canadian animated short To Be involves a teleporter that works by duplicating the "passenger" and killing the original. The film is about the inventor getting called out on the immorality of this. After the protagonist is responsible for one iteration of the inventor getting killed, she atones for the crime by teleporting herself, reasoning that the guilty her has been executed, and the "new her" is innocent.

Pinocchio: Due to being created suddenly on the night, and being thrown into the world alone the following day with almost no knowledge of how is the world surrounding him, Pinocchio becomes an easy target for awful people to tempt him into going with them for their own shady benefit.

Ultron himself serves as an example; though unlike the Vision, who's described as naïve, Ultron's lack of life experience, combined with a quick internet download, drives him insane and convinces him that Humanity needs to be culled.

Invoked when Ultron accuses the Vision of naïveté.

The Vision: Well, I was born yesterday.

Literature

Ed'Bocaj from Almost Night appeared as a child when she was but hours old, and reached full adulthood in days, and was born with the mind of an adult, though she acted childish for fun.

The Last Unicorn: The page's quote at the top is about Lady Amalthea, who is immediately noticeable as having a "newness" to her—each movement she makes indicates that she's doing many things for the first time. This happens to be because up until that point, she was a unicorn.

Dawn Summers in the fifth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a weird case. History was basically rewritten so that Dawn and all related characters all remember her having been there since the beginning, so from their perspective, no, she wasn't born yesterday. However, she incarnated into human form at the start of the season and has no real experience being such.

Delta and the Bannermen features the Chimeron Queen Delta and her unnamed daughter, who in the course of less than a day hatches out of an egg as a green, big-headed monstrosity and grows to the size and general appearance of a young human teenager. She doesnt talk much, but she has a very useful scream.

"The Doctor's Daughter" has the title character, an Opposite-Sex Clone created when the Doctor was forced to stick his hand in a progenation machine at gunpoint. She only knows how to fight because that was all she was programed with, and only develops her own ideas as time goes on.

Luke and Sky Smith from the spinoff The Sarah Jane Adventures; Luke was genetically engineered into a teenage state, and Sky was introduced as a baby before rapidly growing to an appearance that resembled a twelve-year-old girl.

Liam Kincaid, the protagonist of Earth: Final Conflict for seasons 2-3. Born with three parents (one of them an alien) he grows from infant to adult over less than one full episode.

Kyle XY: The title character spent the first 17 years of his life gestating in an incubation chamber.

The classic The Outer Limits (1963) episode "Demon with a Glass Hand" plays with this trope. Trent, the protagonist, begins the story by musing, "I was born ten days ago. A full grown man, born ten days ago." Actually, he's a robot from 1000 years in the future built to protect humanity from genocidal invaders.

Adria, the humanoid Crystal Dragon Jesus of the Ori in Stargate SG-1, is carried for 9 months and born like any other baby, but she ages to young adulthood in about 24 hours.

The penultimate episode of the fourth season of Stargate Atlantis introduces the clone of Doctor Carson Beckett (killed by an explosive tumour in the latter half of the third season), who was unaware that he was a clone until the expedition rescued him from his creator and carried out DNA tests.

Supernatural: Dean's daughter Emma, an Amazon, is conceived, born, and becomes a young adult within a couple of days.

Tabletop Games

A common occurrence in In Nomine, where the angel or demon who was first sent to Earth this morning will nonetheless usually be wearing a body that looks like an adult human. Although they aren't usually sent to Earth immediately after their creation, still there's a major learning curve for those new to Earth no matter how old they actually are, and it has much the same effect.

Theatre

Rocky in The Rocky Horror Show (and its film adaptation) is actually born onstage during the song "I Can Make You a Man". He's a real hunk of a man-baby, and (naturally) has the mind of a toddler, which makes it kind of concerning that his first sexual experience happens when he's less than a day old.

In The Wiz, the Scarecrow's "I Am" Song is called "I Was Born on the Day Before Yesterday".

Video Games

Advance Wars: Days Of Ruin gives us Isabelle, a very recently created clone who is believed to be suffering from amnesia when in reality she's never had any memories to begin with.

Lambda-11 is of unknown age, but dormant until Kokonoe activated her during Continuum Shift. She awkwardly bonds with an insect in her story mode, but otherwise acts almost completely mechanical and obedient.

Mu-12 (Noel Vermillion) has been active only 5 years at the start of Calamity Trigger. It's unknown how much of this effect and her lack of memories contribute to her painfully shy personality, but she is still the most social of the Murakumo units.

Nu-13 is first activated during the events of Calamity Trigger, and can do little but destroy and yandere over Ragna.

The Breath of Fire IV iteration of Ryu gives Nina a Naked First Impression in his first scene in the game; it takes a long time before the player finds out that he was literally summoned into being at that very spot six hundred years ago due to a botched ritual — the same ritual that summoned Fou-lu all those years ago split the functional god in half, and Ryu is the other half.

In Devil May Cry 5, V introduces himself to Dante saying "I have no name. I am but two days old Just kidding. You can call me V." He is only kidding about his name. At the time, he was literally two days old.

The Sylvari from Guild Wars: Eye of the North and Guild Wars 2 are this, as they are a new race just getting their foothold. You actually get to see the 'birth' of the first Sylvari in a cutscene in Eye of the North.

Along the same lines as above, the Guilty Gear games have the Command Gear, Dizzy, who is technically only 3 years old, even though physically she looks like a young woman in her late teens or early twenties, due to the rapid development granted by her Gear cells. She's rather kind-hearted and gentle for a Gear, although this inevitably also comes with some social naivete.

In the game's first hours, Roxas is a "newborn" so to speak in Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days. He barely knows any words, doesn't know what friendship means and he is clueless about just everything. Later on, he develops more and grows a spine, gradually becoming the way he was in Kingdom Hearts II. it's justified because he is Sora's Nobody and born without any of his original self's memories.

Grunt from Mass Effect 2 is a Designer BabySuper Soldier and the only one of thousands that his Krogan creator Okeer thought was worthy, and he's basically born in your cargo bay when you release him from his tank. He does come with some Neural Implanting, but you're the first person he actually talks to outside of Okeer talking to him while he was in his tank (when he was unable to respond). He was also deliberately designed to have his armored headplates not be fully fused together, unlike the adult Krogan, which is reminiscent of how the pieces of a human newborn's skull aren't fully fused until some time after birth.

Mileena in Mortal Kombat, didn't qualify for this Trope for most of the franchise, which claimed she grew up with her sister Kitana, and was thus several centuries old. However, in Mortal Kombat 9, the Retcon changes this so that Kitana meets her in the Flesh Pits right after she was born, meaning Mileena is more-or-less an infant (although "born" fully grown) as far as her true age is concerned.

Klaymen himself in The Neverhood. The world is a kind of Eden (both metaphorically and, er, metaphorically), so it's not surprising there would be some literally new people in it.

In Overwatch, Orisa stands out as the exception to the robot rule mentioned about because her stated age is 1 month old, having been created by the (pre)teen genius Efi Oladele from the remains of an OR-15 robot that was destroyed in an attack by Doomfist. The developers specifically bring this up as something that makes her stand out from other heroes in the 'verse, some of whom have histories going back decades, and cited by Efi and herself as why she's still getting the hang of this whole "hero" business. For comparison the other Omnic who's a playable character, Zenyatta, is 20 years old and is portrayed as a wise mentor figure, even to characters who are older than he is.

Rika from Phantasy Star IV is one year old, but looks just a little younger than Kyra, who is 18.

Baton, the heroine of Tadpole Treble is literally born at the start of the game, thus making the first level a Justified Tutorial, as her parents teach her the way the world works. Her curiosity also gets her caught by Coda the pelican when she ignores her mother's warning, setting the stage for the rest of the game. Sonata, another tadpole met in Midnight Bayou, is described as also being born yesterday in the Bestiary, which makes his sophisticated serenade to Baton that much funnier.

KOS-MOS from Xenosaga is activated for the first time during the events of the first game. Thus she is at her most robotic because she doesn't have personal data-experience. Although she does share data with a buggy prototype that was activated once before.

Webcomics

In Far Out, this is suggested to the main character as a possibility, instead of amnesia. Given he's a robot, it's a real one.

In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! this is the reason the three peanut butter monsters—Molly, Golly, and Jolly—act so immature. They're only a matter of months old. The only reason they don't act like infants is that they're hyper-intelligent and learn quickly.

Web Original

Hanazuki, the title character of Hanazuki: Full of Treasures, was born in the first episode, and we're reminded of it in episode two when she tells Sleepy Unicorn she was born yesterday.

Belphoebe in the Whateley Universe is a cloned drow created by one student (Belphegor) using the cloning chamber he'd stolen from another (Jobe Wilkins) and accidentally imprinted with a copy of his own memories. Hence while chronologically she's 0, she looks 16 and is considered that age by the administration, staff and students.

Cubert from Futurama was cloned from one of the Professor's more shapely back growths, and was 'born' as a young boy of around ten.

In Get Ed, Ed was "electrogenetically engineered" and acts like he hasn't been around more than a few months. While he's already good friends with his teammates at the start of the show and knows about the basics of life like eating and bathing, he's still utterly amazed when he learns that "those signs with numbers on them" are the speed limit (you'd think a courier would know that) and generally tends to be naive.

The copies of Pinkie Pie from the mirror pool in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic all have her samepersonality, but none of the knowledge, memories, or life lessons the original has learned throughout the course of her life. The result is a large number of obnoxiously destructive versions of Pinkie Pie (In other words, it's not pretty). One that got away pops up in the background of The Saddle Row Review implying that, if given enough time to live and learn on their own, they're fully capable of developing mentally into normal ponies.

Peep in Peep and the Big Wide World is a baby male chicken about as intelligent as a human first grader. In one episode he recalls his entire life, which actually did start yesterday.

In the Star Fairies TV special, True Love, Whisper, Jazz, Spice, and Nightsong were created in an instant, and are instructed as to who Sparkle is and who they are.

Concept art for "Hit the Diamond" implies that one member of the Ruby Squad sent to Earth, the one with the gem in her leg, was literally created one day before their mission, which explains her Naïve Newcomer personality and general lack of self-confidence.

In "Know Your Fusion", Smoky Quartz points out that they don't know that much about themself yet as, between their debut episode and this one, they've literally existed for about ten minutes total.

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy